HD 

197 
1893 


UC-NRLF 


GEOGRflffllGflL 


GONGENTRHT10N, 


Historic  Feature  of 


American  floriculture. 


BY 

JOHN    iHYDE., 

Li*'      '  """     * 

Expert  Special  Agent,  Statistics  of  Agriculture,  Eleventh  U.  S.  Census,  Fellow  of 
the  Royal  Statistical  Society  of  London  and  of  the  American  Statistical  Asso- 
ciation, Member  or  the  Council  of  the  National  Geographic  Society, 
Honorary    Corresponding    Member  of   the    State    Historical 
Society  of  Wisconsin  and  of  the  Society  of  Alaskan 
Natural  History  and  Ethnology,  etc. 


PREPARED,  BY  INVITATION,  FOH  THE 

FIFTH  BIENNIAL  SESSION 

OF  THE 

INTERNATIONAL  STATISTICAL  INSTITUTE, 

CHICAGO,  1893. 


PRINTED  FOR  PRIVATE  CIRCULATION. 


KENSINGTON  PUBLISHING  COMPANY, 
WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 


GEOGRflPHIGflL  ^EE^— 
^EEEEE  GONGENTRflTION, 


Historic  Feature  ot 

flmerican  floriculture. 


BY 

JOHN    HYDR, 

Expert  Special  Agent,  Statistics  of  Agriculture,  Eleventh  U.  S.  Census,  Fellow  of 
the  Royal  Statistical  Society  of  London  and  of  the  American  Statistical  Asso- 
ciation, Member  of  the  Council  of  the  National  Geographic  Society, 
Honorary    Corresponding    Member  of   the    State    Historical 
Society  of  Wisconsin  and  of  the  Society  of  Alaskan 
Natural  History  and  Ethnology,  etc. 


PREPARED,  BY  INVITATION,  FOR  THE 
FIFTH  BIENNIAL  SESSION 

OF  THE 

INTERNATIONAL  STATISTICAL  INSTITUTE, 

CHICAGO,  1893. 


PRINTED  FOR  PRIVATE  CIRCULATION. 


KENSINGTON  PUBLISHING  COMPANY, 
WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 


GEOGRAPHICAL  CONCENTRATION : 

fln  Historic  Feature  of  American  Agriculture. 

In  that  marvelous  series  of  pictures  illustrative  of  the 
national  growth,  geographical  distribution,  and  material 
progress  of  the  people  of  the  United  States,  presented  to  the 
country  and  the  world  in  the  reports  of  successive  decennial 
censuses,  the  most  conspicuous  feature  is  agriculture,  the 
central  figure  the  husbandman.  Whether  considered  with 
regard  to  the  number  of  persons  to  whom,  directly  or  in- 
directly, it  gives  employment,  to  its  close  relation  to  the 
social  system  of  the  country,  to  the  volume  and  value  of  its. 
products  or  to  the  relation  of  those  products  to  our  trade  with 
other  nations,  American  agriculture  is  a  subject  of  large  di- 
mensions. No  single  event  in  the  history  of  the  Republic 
nor  any  of  those  triumphs  of  inventive  genius  and  construc- 
tive skill  which  mark  our  onward  march  as  a  people ;  not 
even  that  mighty  westward  movement  of  population  which,, 
long  before  it  had  attained  the  volume  we  have  witnessed  in 
our  own  day,  excited  the  astonishment  of  the  civilized  world 
and  seemed  to  the  philosophic  historian  of  Europe  to  have  all 
the  grandeur  and  solemnity  of  a  providential  event, — none  of 
them,  to  my  mind,  possesses  greater  significance  or  is  more 
beneficent  and  far-reaching,  at  least  in  its  direct  results,  than 
are  the  transformation,  on  so  unexampled  a  scale,  of  forest 
and  prairie  into  smiling  cornfields  and  fruitful  orchards  and 
that  prodigious  annual  ingathering  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth 


M553986 


4  GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION. 

which  has  made  this  country  facile  princeps  among  the  na- 
tions of  the  world. 

The  agriculture  of  a  country,  the  capabilities  of  which  are 
so  enormous  that  its  annual  production  of  a  single  cereal  is 
measured  by  billions  of  bushels,  and  which  in  the  ten  years 
ending  June  30,  1890,  sold  $5,639,203,272  worth  of  its  agri- 
cultural products  to  other  nations  after  supplying  the  require- 
ments of  its  own  large  population ;  a  country  whose  climatic 
range  extends  from  the  sub-Arctic  to  the  sub-Tropic,  modi- 
fied by  the  greatest  lake  system  and  two  of  the  greatest 
mountain  ranges  in  the  world,  and  with  a  mean  annual  rain- 
fall varying  from  1.85  inches  in  its  most  arid  region  to  105. 25 
inches  in  its  region  of  greatest  precipitation ;  a  country  occu- 
pied by  so  composite  a  people  that  in  three  of  the  greatest 
agricultural  states  in  the  Union,  including  the  state  that 
stands  first  in  the  production  of  wheat,  the  foreign-born  ele- 
ment in  the  agricultural  population  outnumbers  the  native, 
while  in  another  great  agricultural  state  there  are  136  negroes 
to  every  100  whites, — the  agriculture  of  such  a  country 
necessarily  affords  an  interesting  and  instructive  field  of  in- 
vestigation, from  whatever  point  of  view  it  is  considered. 
Among  its  various  features  of  interest  is  that  tendency  to 
geographical  concentration  which  has  always  characterized 
the  cultivation  of  many  of  the  principal  products  of  the  soil. 
In  speaking  of  geographical  concentration  as  an  historic  fea- 
ture of  American  agriculture  I  do  not  refer  to  those  limita- 
tions of  the  area  of  production  which  are  imposed  by  the 
conditions  of  climate,  as  in  the  case  of  the  sub-tropical  pro- 
ducts of  the  states  bordering  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  but  only 
to  products  that  have  a  wide  climatic  range,  such  as  maize, 
wheat,  oats,  barley,  rye,  tobacco,  flax,  hemp,  hops,  etc. ,  the 
cultivation  of  which  in  the  United  States  has  always  been 
distinguished  for  its  geographical  concentration. 


GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION.  5 

Indian  corn,  or  maize,  is  cultivated  in  this  country  from  the 
most  easterly  county  in  Maine  to  the  most  westerly  in  the 
state  of  Washington  and  from  the  valley  of  the  Red  River  of 
the  North  to  the  confines  of  the  Everglades  of  Florida.  Its 
area  of  production  is,  in  fact,  more  generally  distributed  than 
that  of  any  other  product  except  grass,  and  yet  at  no  agricul- 
tural census  ever  taken  has  there  been  less  than  38.57  per 
cent  of  the  total  crop  of  the  country  produced  in  what  have 
been  for  the  time  being  the  four  leading  corn-producing  states, 
while  the  percentage  has  been  as  high  as  52.36  and  was 
50. 80  as  recently  as  1889.  The  states  that  stood  first,  second, 
and  third  in  the  scale  of  prodtiction  in  1839  stood  tenth,  eighth, 
and  seventeenth  in  rank,  respectively,  in  1889,  notwithstand- 
ing that  their  own  aggregate  production  had  increased  41.72 
per  cent.  On  so  vast  a  scale  is  corn  now  cultivated  in  a  group 
of  states  in  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri  valleys  that  the  com- 
bined production  of  Iowa,  Illinois,  and  Kansas  in  1889  ex- 
ceeded by  over  100,000,000  bushels  the  total  corn  crop  of  the 
country  but  twenty  years  before.  It  was  the  year  1879,  how- 
ever, that  witnessed,  so  far  as  can  be  determined  from  official 
statistics,  the  high-water  mark  of  the  tendency  to  concentra- 
tion in  the  cultivation  of  this  favorite  product,  the  produc- 
tion of  the  states  of  Illinois  and  Iowa  in  that  year  aggregat- 
ing the  enormous  total  of  600,816,728  bushels,  or  34.23  per 
cent  of  the  entire  crop  of  the  country.  During  the  following 
decade  there  was  some  tendency  toward  decentralization,  but 
yet  the  census  of  1890  found  over  one-half  of  the  total  corn 
crop  of  the  previous  year  to  have  been  produced  in  four  states 
containing  less  than  one-tenth  of  the  entire  area  of  the  country, 
notwithstanding  that  a  production  of  at  least  one-tenth  of  a 
bushel  to  every  acre  of  land  surface  and  of  at  least  five  bushels 
per  capita  of  population  extended  all  the  way  from  the  St. 
Lawrence  River  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  westward  to 


t  GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION. 

within  sight  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

In  the  case  of  wheat  the  area  of  principal  production  has 
undergone  great  changes  during  the  last  half-century.  While 
its  center  moved  steadily  westward  for  forty  years,  as  was 
the  case  also  with  that  of  the  production  of  corn,  oats,  and 
Parley,  the  result  of  that  remarkable  redistribution  of  the 
productive  area  which  occurred  during  the  closing  years  of 
the  decade  ending  with  1889  was  that  the  two  states  of  prin- 
cipal production  were  as  widely  separated  geographically  as 
they  are  in  their  physical  conditions,  Minnesota  leading  with 
11.17  percent  of  the  total  and  California  standing  second 
with  8. 73  per  cent,  while  the  addition  of  the  crops  of  Illinois 
and  Indiana  raised  the  proportion  to  35. 85  per  cent.  Although 
this  is  a  smaller  percentage  of  the  total  crop  of  the  country 
than  was  contributed  by  the  four  leading  wheat-producing 
states  at  any  previous  agricultural  census,  it  is  a  significant 
fact  that  more  than  one-third  of  the  total  production  of  the 
principal  bread-plant  had  to  be  credited  to  so  limited  an  area. 
But  whatever  the  changes  in  the  location  of  the  wheat-pro- 
ducing area  there  has  always  been  a  more  or  less  marked 
geographical  concentration.  In  1839  61.52  per  cent  of  the 
total  wheat  crop  was  produced  in  four  states,  containing  only 
5.84  per  cent  of  the  entire  land  surface  of  the  country.  In 
1889  those  same  states  produced  only  15.66  per  cent  of  the 
total,  while  four  others,  containing  11.01  per  cent  of  the 
entire  land  surface,  produced  35.85  per  cent  of  the  total 
crop. 

The  cultivation  of  oats  was  centralized  to  so  great  an  ex- 
tent in  1839  that  56.20  per  cent  of  the  total  oat  crop  of  the 
country  was  the  production  of  four  states.  Succeeding  de- 
cennial censuses  have  found  various  changes  in  the  area  of 
principal  production,  until  the  states  that  formerly  stood  at 
the  head  of  the  list  have  come  to  make  relatively  small  con- 


GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION.  7 

tributions  to  the  total.  At  no  census,  however,  has  less  than 
45.41  per  cent  had  to  be  credited  to  what  were  for  the  time 
being  the  four  leading  oat-producing  states.  Between  1879 
and  1889  the  production  of  oats  almost  doubled  and  the  en- 
ormous increase  in  the  acreage  was  more  generally  distri- 
buted over  the  country  at  large  than  was  the  increase  in  the 
acreage  devoted  to  any  other  important  product,  even  the 
southern  states  having  a  net  increase  amounting  to  705,869 
acres.  Nevertheless  the  percentage  of  the  total  crop  of  the 
country  grown  in  the  four  states  of  largest  production  was 
even  greater  in  1889  than  in  1879. 

Rye  has  never  been  a  favorite  crop  in  the  United  States, 
and  there  have  been  times  when  its  cultivation  has  shown  a 
marked  decline.     In  fact,  its  production  increased  only  52.43 
per  cent  during  the  fifty  years,  1840  to  1890,  in  which  popu- 
lation increased  266.87  per  cent.     It  is  no  wonder,  therefore, 
that,  notwithstanding  its  hardiness  as  a  plant,  its  cultivation 
is  very  unequally  distributed,  even  within  the  climatic  range 
to  which  it  normally  belongs.     The  interesting  fact,  how- 
ever, remains  that  whatever  may  have  been  the  fluctuations 
of  its  production,  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  total  crop 
of  the  country  has  always  been  contributed  by  some  two  or 
three  states.     In   1839,  1849,  1859,   and   1869  the  states  of 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania  produced  51.45,  63.10,  48.63, 
and   35.79  per  cent  of  the  total  crops  of  those  years.     In 
1879  Illinois  had  displaced  New  York,  and  two  other  western 
states,  Wisconsin  and  Iowa,  were  coming  into  prominence  as 
rye-producing  states.     Still  there  was  no  less  marked  a  con- 
centration of  the  area  of  production,  the  two  leading  states 
producing  34.31  per  cent  and  the  three  next  in  rank  32.53 
per  cent,  of 'the  total  crop.     The  census  of  1890  disclosed 
some  tendency  toward  decentralization  in  the  cultivation  of 
this  product.     But  while  Wisconsin  stood  at  the  head  of  the 


8  GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION. 

list  with  14.96  per  cent  of  the  total  crop,  the  old  rye-pro- 
ducing states  of  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  stood  second 
and  third,  respectively,  with  a  combined  production  amount- 
ing to  23.96  per  cent  of  the  total. 

While  the  total  production  of  buckwheat  in  the  United 
States  is  inconsiderable,  it  is  contributed  to,  to  a  greater  or 
less  extent,  by  every  state  in  the  Union  except  Louisiana 
and  Nevada,  and  every  territory  except  Arizona  and  Okla- 
homa. At  six  successive  decennial  censuses,  however,  over 
60  per  cent  of  the  total  production  has  been  grown  in  New 
York  and  Pennsylvania,  there  being  a  difference  of  only  0.52 
per  cent  in  the  proportion  contributed  by  those  states  when 
the  total  crop  of  the  country  was  17,571,818  bushels  and 
when  it  was  only  7,291,743  bushels. 

It  is,  however,  in  the  distribution  of  the  area  under  barley 
that  we  encounter  the  greatest  anomalies,  so  far  as  the 
cereals  are  concerned.  This  grain  has  an  exceedingly  wide 
climatic  range,  its  limit  of  successful  cultivation  extending 
farther  north  than  that  of  any  other  cereal,  while  it  can  also 
be  profitably  grown  in  sub-tropical  regions.  It  is  cultivated 
with  great  success  in  Arizona,  and  at  the  Tenth  Census  a 
larger  proportion  of  the  total  barley  crop  of  the  country  was 
found  to  have  been  grown  where  the  annual  rainfall  was  less 
than  15  inches  than  of  the  total  crop  of  any  other  cereal. 
Notwithstanding  all  this,  however,  barley  has  always  been 
distinguished  for  the  density  of  its  area  of  principal  produc- 
tion. In  1839  the  state  of  New  York  produced  60.56  per 
cent  of  the  total  crop  of  the  country,  or  over  seven  times  as 
much  as  was  produced  by  any  other  state.  In  1849  the  pro- 
duction of  New  York  had  increased  to  69.38  per  cent  of  the 
total,  or  more  than  ten  times  that  of  any  other  state.  In 
1859  California  had  come  to  the  front,  contributing  27.90  per 
cent  of  the  total  production,  as  compared  with  26.45  Per  cent 


GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION.  9 

produced  in  New  York.  Ten  years  more  and  the  same  two 
states,  so  utterly  dissimilar  both  in  their  physical  conditions 
and  their  methods  of  cultivation,  were  producing  54.49  per 
cent  of  the  total,  a  proportion,  however,  that  was  reduced  to 
46.04  per  cent  during  the  decade  ending  with  1879.  Among 
the  many  remarkable  changes  disclosed  by  the  census  of 
1890  is  the  very  large  increase  in  the  cultivation  of  barley, 
the  increase  in  acreage  between  1879  and  1889  amounting  to 
6 1  23  per  cent  and  the  increase  in  production  to  78.04  per 
cent.  Still,  two  states  were  producing  41.84  per  cent  and 
two  others  28.73  Per  cent  of  the  total  crop  of  the  country, 
New  York  producing  over  sixteen  times  as  much  as  the 
adjoining  state  of  Pennsylvania,  of  almost  equal  area  and 
with  very  similar  agricultural  conditions. 

There  are  few  agricultural  products  that  more  readily  ac- 
commodate themselves  to  varying  conditions  of  spil  and  cli- 
mate than  does  tobacco.  In  India  it  is  grown  in  almost 
every  district,  while  in  Europe  its  cultivation  extends  from 
Sicily  to  Sweden.  In  1839  its  production  in  the  United 
States  was  contributed  to  by  every  state  and  territory,  and 
in  1889  there  were  but  six  out  of  the  greatly  increased  num- 
ber of  political  divisions  that  did  not  make  some  contribution 
to  the  tobacco  crop  of  the  country.  Nevertheless  53.76  per 
cent  of  the  crop  of  1839  and  55.38  per  cent  of  the  crop  of 
1889  (the  latter  reaching  the  large  total  of  488,256,646 
pounds)  were  produced  in  the  states  of  Kentucky  and  Vir- 
ginia. While  the  production  of  the  four  leading  tobacco- 
growing  states  has  fallen  from  83.57  per  cent  of  the  total  in 
1839  to  70.58  per  cent  of  the  total  in  1889,  the  proportion 
borne  by  the  crop  of  Kentucky  has  gradually  increased  from 
24.90  per  cent  in  1859  to  45.44  per  cent  in  1889. 

The  cultivation  of  flax  is  one  of  the  curiosities  of  American 
agriculture.  It  has  passed  through  extraordinary  vicissitudes, 


10  GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION. 

flax  having  at  one  time  been  grown  chiefly  for  its  fiber,  and 
at  another  almost  entirely  for  its  seed.  It  has  always,  how- 
ever, been  noted  for  the  vagaries  of  its  geographical  distribu- 
tion. It  was  not  until  1850  that  flax  and  hemp  were  sepa- 
rately reported  in  the  census  statistics,  but  at  that  time  flax 
was  being  grown,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  in  every  state 
of  the  Union  with  the  exception  of  Louisiana  and  in  every 
territory  except  Minnesota  Three  states,  however,  pro- 
duced 57.38  per  cent  of  the  total  seed  crop  and  three  52  42 
per  cent  of  the  total  amount  of  fiber,  Ohio  producing 
two  and  one-half  times  as  much  seed  and  Kentucky  more 
than  twice  as  much  fiber  as  any  other  state.  We  need  not 
follow  this  product  through  the  changing  circumstances  of  its 
eventful  history.  It  is,  however,  worthy  of  note  that  of  the 
production  of  fiber  in  1869,  which  was  to  the  production  in 
1889  as  112  to  i,  65.90  per  cent  was  produced  in  Ohio.  Ten 
years  later  and  the  relative  production  of  flaxseed  and  fiber 
was  practically  reversed,  and  yet  the  geographical  concentra- 
tion of  both  branches  of  the  industry  was  no  less  marked 
than  before.  In  1889  it  was  still  further  intensified,  four 
northwestern  states  producing  80.06  per  cent  of  the  total 
flaxseed  crop  of  the  country.  The  production  of  fiber  has 
shrunk  to  very  small  proportions,  and  a  similar  concentra- 
tion characterizes  it.  In  1889  Illinois  raised  23.93  percent 
of  the  total  fiber  production  of  the  country,  and  99.35  per 
cent  of  the  crop  of  the  state  was  produced  in  three  counties. 
Kansas  contributed  14.95  Per  cent  °f  the  total,  and  95. 16  per 
cent  of  its  entire  production  was  derived  from  two  counties. 
Hemp  is  a  product  that  is  cultivated  in  Europe  from  the 
shores  of  the  White  Sea  to  those  of  the  Mediterranean, 
France  producing  three,  Austria- Hungary  six,  Italy  nearly 
seven  and  Russia  over  ten  tons  for  every  ton  produced  in  the 
United  States.  It  also  flourishes  throughout  extensive  regions 


GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION.  II 

in  Asia,  Africa  and  South  America  Its  cultivation  in  the 
United  States,  however,  is  almost  entirely  confined  to  the 
state  of  Kentucky,  notwithstanding  that  the  annual  produc- 
tion falls  considerably  short  of  the  requirements  of  the 
country.  In  1849  51-01  Per  cent  °f  the  total  hemp  crop  of 
the  country  was  grown  in  that  state.  In  1889  Kentucky's  con- 
tribution to  the  total  was  no  less  than  93.77  per  cent,  its  pro- 
portion having  steadily  increased,  regardless  of  the  fluctua- 
tions in  the  total  amount  produced.  -  Moreover,  not  only  is 
the  industry  centralized  in  a  single  state,  but  it  is  concen- 
trated in  a  very  small  group  of  counties,  four  of  them  pro- 
ducing 59.48  per  cent  and  six  others  31.94  per  cent  of  the 
total  crop  of  the  country.  There  is,  therefore,  but  8.58  per 
cent  of  the  entire  crop  grown  in  the  remaining  twenty-four 
hemp-producing  counties  of  the  eight  hemp-producing 
states. 

The  range  of  profitable  cultivation  in  the  case  of  the  hop 
plant,  though  less  extensive  than  that  of  most  of  the  other 
products  to  which  reference  has  been  made,  is  still  sufficiently 
wide  to  make  the  situation  of  its  areas  of  principal  production 
in  this  country  a  matter  of  interest  in  this  connection.  Be- 
ginning, as  in  the  case  of  the  other  products,  with  the  first 
census  of  agriculture  ever  taken  in  the  United  States,  that 
of  1840,  it  is  found  that  of  the  total  production  of  hops  in 
1839,  amounting  to  1,238,502  pounds,  36.11  per  cent  was  pro- 
duced in  New  York  and  40.23  per  cent  in  Massachusetts  and 
New  Hampshire.  Forty  years  later,  when  the  hop  produc- 
tion of  the  country  had  increased  to  26,546,378  pounds,  that 
of  New  York  had  increased  in  so  much  greater  a  ratio  as  to 
amount  to  81.48  per  cent  of  the  total.  The  states  that  had 
stood  second  and  third  in  rank  of  production  in  1839  were 
scarcely  known  as  hop-producing  states,  Wisconsin  in  the 
northwest  and  California  and  Washington  on  the  Pacific 


12  GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION. 

coast  having  far  outranked  them.  Ten  years  more  and  the 
industry  was  almost  revolutionized.  While  New  York  still 
contained  73.03  per  cent  of  the  total  hop  acreage,  its  produc- 
tion amounted  to  only  51.22  per  cent  of  the  total  yield,  owing 
to  the  remarkable  growth  of  the  industry  on  the  Pacific  coast, 
where  24.33  Per  cent  of  the  hop  acreage  of  the  country 
yielded  47.16  per  cent  of  the  total  production.  The  yield 
per  acre  on  the  Pacific  coast  being  nearly  three  times  as 
great  as  it  is  in  the  state  of  New  York,  the  next  census  will 
probably  find  the  hop  production  of  the  country  scarcely  less 
concentrated  than  in  the  past,  but  concentrated  not  in  the 
state  that  has  so  long  dominated  the  industry,  but  3,000 
miles  farther  west. 

Now,  however  convenient  it  might  be  to  do  so,  we  cannot 
dismiss  these  inequalities  of  distribution  with  the  simple  as- 
sertion that  they  represent  the  experience  and  judgment  of 
the  American  farmer  as  to  the  balance  of  advantage  accruing 
from  differences  in  temperature,  in  rainfall,  in  the  chemical 
composition  and  mechanical  structure  of  soils,  in  facility  of 
cultivation,  in  cheapness  of  labor,  in  proximity  to  markets, 
in  convenience  of  transportation,  and  other  considerations 
that  affect,  in  varying  measure,  the  cultivation  of  crops ;  in 
other  words,  that  they  are  wholly  the  result  qf  the  operation 
of  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 

While  it  would  be  absurd  to  deny  that,  at  least  in  the  case 
of  corn,  wheat,  and  oats,  the  areas  of  principal  production 
are  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  successful  cultivation  of  those 
products,  the  geographical  distribution  even  of  those  lead- 
ing cereals  as  it  exists  to-day  is  in  no  small  degree  the  result 
of  circumstances  that  are  entirely  distinct  from  any  consid- 
erations of  the  superiority  of  soil  and  climate  and  that  cannot 
be  depended  upon  to  maintain  the  situation  they  have  so 
largely  contributed  to  bring  about. 


GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION.  13 

That  tide  of  population  which  has  been  gradually  rolling 
westward  has  brought  one  state  after  another  under  the 
dominion  of  the  plow,  each  being  largely  devoted,  in  turn, 
to  the  cultivation  of  a  very  limited  number  of  products,  se- 
lected with  regard  to  facility  of  cultivation  and  the  promise 
of  a  speedy  return.  Reaching  the  central  Mississippi  valley 
that  tide  of  population — the  simile  is  both  apt  and  conven- 
ient— spread  itself  out  over  a  wide  expanse  of  country,  the 
soil  of  which,  if  not  more  fertile  than  that  of  the  Eastern 
States,  was  at  least  more  uniformly  susceptible  of  cultivation. 
Here  under  those  generous  conditions  of  the  United  States  land 
laws  which  made  the  land  practically  a  free  gift  100,000,000 
acres  and  more  were  within  a  very  few  years  converted  into 
farms,  and  upon  those  farms  the  leading  cereals  have  been 
cultivated  on  a  scale  of  unexampled  magnitude  and  with  an 
unprecedented  geographical  concentration.  To  such  an  ex- 
tent has  that  concentration  been  carried  in  certain  portions 
of  that  remarkable  region  that  in  1889  the  state  of  Illinois 
had  no  less  than  39  per  cent  of  its  entire  land  surface  de- 
voted to  the  cultivation  of  corn,  wheat  and  oats,  notwith- 
standing the  large  number  of  its  towns  and  cities,  including 
Chicago,  its  10, 116  miles  of  railroad,  its  thousands  of  miles 
of  public  highways,  and  that  tendency  toward  a  greater  di- 
versification which  even  at  that  time  had  had  a  marked  effect 
upon  the  agriculture  of  the  state. 

The  center  of  cereal  production,  however,  has  always  been 
in  advance  of  the  center  of  population,  and  as  surely  as  that 
branch  of  industry  has  succeeded  the  pastoral,  so  surely  has 
it  been,  itself,  gradually  supplanted  by  that  more  diversified 
system  of  farming  which  has  been  rendered  necessary  by  the 
requirements  of  a  population  increasing  not  merely  in  num- 
bers, but  also  in  the  multiplicity  of  its  wants.  Hence,  while 
some  of  the  older  agricultural  states  have,  until  within  the 


14  GEOGRAPHICAL  CONCENTRATION. 

last  few  years,  gone  on  increasing,  little  by  little,  their  pro- 
duction of  the  principal  cereals,  as  the  total  area  of  their 
land  in  farms  and  likewise  that  of  their  improved  land  have 
slowly  increased,  every  year  has  witnessed  a  greater  diversifi- 
cation of  their  agricultural  industry,  so  that  even  their  in- 
creasing production  of  grain  has  constituted  a  decreasing 
proportion  of  their  entire  farming  operations.  In  course  of 
time,  however,  even  this  limited  increase,  insufficient  to  keep 
pace  with  the  growth  of  population,  has  come  to  an  end,  and 
the  Eleventh  Census  finds  a  more  or  less  considerable  de- 
crease in  the  total  acreage  devoted  to  the  cultivation  of 
cereals,  not  merely  in  the  New  England  states,  where  it  ex- 
cites but  little  surprise,  but  also  in  New  York,  New  Jersey, 
Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  and  Illinois.  Nor  is  this  wholly  the  re- 
sult of  that  curtailment  of  the  area  under  wheat  to  which 
reference  will  presently  be  made.  Even  in  Illinois,  long  the 
greatest  cereal-producing  state  in  the  Union,  oats  are  the 
only  cereal  not  showing  a  reduction  in  acreage,  while  the 
curtailment  of  the  area  under  corn  amounts  to  no  less  than 
1,156,256  acres. 

It  may,  of  course,  be  contended  that  these  are  but  tempo- 
rary fluctuations,  at  least  in  such  a  state  as  Illinois,  and  every 
one  knows  that  let  the  agriculture  of  a  country  be  ever  so 
stable  it  cannot  but  be  affected  by  the  rise  and  fall  of  prices, 
by  a  succession  of  unfavorable  seasons,  or  by  the  ravages  of 
disease  or  insect  enemies.  But  when  there  is  already  a 
marked  tendency  toward  a  system  of  farming  which,  though 
it  may  occasionally  diminish  the  profits,  can  always  be  de- 
pended upon  to  lessen  the  risks — a  consideration  of  no  small 
moment  in  such  an  industry  as  agriculture — any  especially 
adverse  conditions  that  may  arise  will  only  serve  to  give  it 
additional  force. 

Moreover,  this  tendency  is  by  no  means  confined  to  the 


GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION.  15 

older-settled  states,  but  is,  on  the  contrary,  growing  steadily 
even  in  the  newer  regions  west  of  the  Mississippi  river. 
Eight  years  ago  I  watched  its  beginnings  in  Minnesota  and 
Dakota,  and  in  a  series  of  letters  on  the  agriculture  of  those 
states,  which  were  given  a  somewhat  extensive  circulation  by 
the  management  of  one  of  the  railroads  of  that  region,  I  took 
occasion  to  urge  upon  the  northwestern  farmer  the  advantage 
to  be  derived  from  a  greater  diversification  of  his  industry. 
How  far  those  recommendations,  taken  up  and  reinforced  as 
they  were  by  leading  agriculturists,  contributed  to  bring 
about  the  change  that  has  since  taken  place  will  never  be 
known,  but  not  only  did  the  census  of  1890  find  in  Minnesota 
an  astonishing  development  of  the  livestock  and  dairy  indus- 
tries, but  the  large  area  of  6,297,044  acres  devoted  to  the 
cultivation  of  corn,  wheat,  oats,  barley,  rye,  and  buckwheat 
in  that  state  was  found  to  be  more  evenly  distributed  among" 
those  different  cereals  than  was  the  cereal  acreage  of  any 
other  state  in  the  Union.  It  is  only  a  few  years  since  in  the 
great  wheat  belt  of  North  Dakota  it  was  impossible  to  pro- 
cure butter,  cheese,  eggs  or  fruit  that  had  not  been  brought 
hundreds  of  miles  from  some  leading  produce  market  or  some 
agricultural  district  that  was  not  so  completely  given  up  to 
a  single  branch  of  the  industry.  Now,  however,  all  this  is 
changed  and  mixed  farming  is  in  the  ascendant.  This  is 
equally  true  of  the  states  west  of  the  Missouri  river;  indeed, 
when  in  1889  so  many  parts  of  the  country  had  a  short  fruit 
crop,  hundreds  of  carloads  of  apples,  grown  on  the  but 
recently  treeless  plains  of  Nebraska,  were  shipped  both  to 
New  York  and  San  Francisco. 

The  growing  favor  with  ^'hich  mixed  farming  is  regarded 
is  not,  however,  due  exclusively  to  the  large  and  increasing 
demand  for  meat,  poultry,  eggs,  milk,  butter,  cheese,  vege- 
tables and  fruits  of  all  kinds  and  a  variety  of  other  products, 


l6  GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION. 

nor  yet  to  any  general  recognition  on  the  part  of  the  farmer 
of  the  unmistakable  advantages  accruing  from  a  diversified 
agriculture.  The  era  of  low  prices  through  which  the  country 
has  been  passing  and  the  enormous  shrinkage  in  our  exports 
of  grain  have  done  much  to  stimulate  it.  Until  recently  the 
rapid  numerical  increase  and  growing  prosperity  of  our  own 
population,  added  to  the  apparently  illimitable  capacity  of 
foreign  countries  to  absorb  our  surplus  production,  have  af- 
forded a  ready  market  for  even  the  largest  of  our  crops. 
But  however  it  may  be  in  the  future,  there  has  certainly  been 
a  suspension  of  the  conditions  that  obtained  for  so  many 
years  Largely  as  a  consequence,  there  were  withdrawn 
from  the  cultivation  of  wheat  in  thirty- five  states  of  the 
Union,  between  1879  and  1889  and  doubtless  in  the  closing 
years  of  the  decade,  no  fewer  than  8,440,508  acres  of  land,  of 
which  2,463,740  acres  were  in  Iowa,  1,204,080  acres  in  Wis- 
consin and  977,610  acres  in  Illinois,  the  whole  constituting  an 
area  nearly  three  and  one-half  times  as  great  as  the  total 
wheat  acreage  of  the  United  Kingdom.  Imagine  the  effect 
of  such  an  element  of  disturbance  upon  the  general  order  of 
crop  distribution !  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  farmer  should 
have  recourse  to  a  system  of  agriculture  that  will  to  a  large 
extent  relieve  him  of  the  necessity  of  a  continual  readjust- 
ment of  his  farming  operations  to  meet  possibly  temporary 
fluctuations  in  the  demand  for  particular  products? 

Immeasurably  the  most  important  of  recent  events,  in  its 
bearing  upon  American  agriculture,  is  the  practical  exhaus- 
tion of  the  public  domain.  While  there  are  still  millions  of 
acres  of  land  inclosed  in  farms,  but  not  yet  brought  under 
cultivation,  no  such  addition  is  likely  again  to  be  made  to  the 
cereal  acreage  of  the  country  as  has  been  witnessed  almost 
annually  for  many  years  past. 

One  inevitable  result  of  this  fact,  taken  in  conjunction  with 


GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION.  17 

the  steady  increase  of  population,  will  be  the  gradual  equali- 
zation of  the  cost  of  production.  This  will  certainly  tend 
toward  decentralization.  The  necessity  of  a  more  considerate 
treatment  of  the  soil,  which  will  force  itself,  little  by  little, 
upon  the  attention  of  the  western  farmer,  will  probably  have 
a  similar  tendency.  The  establishment  of  state  agricultural 
experiment  stations  and  their  liberal  subsidization  by  the 
national  government  is  another  step  in  the  same  direction, 
while  the  extension  of  manufactures  will,  even  independently 
of  the  growth  of  population,  contribute  materially  to  the 
same  result. 

There  is  no  question  that  the  production  of  barley  in  the 
west  has  been  greatly  stimulated  by  the  increase  in  the  brew- 
ing industry  in  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  St.  Louis,  and  other 
cities,  that  industry  having  now  attained  such  magnitude  that 
in  the  three  cities  I  have  mentioned  the  consumption  of  bar- 
ley exceeds  even  that  of  wheat.  I  am  not  sure  that  it  is  not 
to  the  astonishingly  high  rate  at  which  the  domestic  demand 
for  barley  has  kept  on  increasing  that  the  continued  failure  of 
the  American  farmer  to  grow  a  sufficient  quantity  of  that 
grain  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  home  market  is  largely 
attributable,  for  while  in  the  fifty  years  ending  with  1890  the 
percentage  of  increase  in  the  production  of  barley  in  this 
country  was  six  times  as  great  as  that  of  the  increase  of  pop- 
ulation, the  percentage  of  increase  in  the  consumption  of 
malt  liquors  was  more  than  twice  as  great  as  that  of  the  pro- 
duction of  barley. 

In  arriving  at  the  conclusion  that  the  United  States  has 
witnessed  the  greatest  geographical  concentration  in  the  cul- 
tivation of  its  various  agricultural  products  that  it  is  likely  to 
see,  and  that  while  nothing  like  an  equal  geographical  distri- 
bution of  the  areas  devoted  to  particular  products  is  to  be 
expected  or  even  desired,  yet  that  henceforward  there  will 


l8  GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION. 

be  a  decided  tendency  toward  decentralization,  I  have  en- 
deavored not  to  underestimate  the  forces  that  may  run 
counter  to  such  a  result.  I  appreciate  the  importance  to  the 
farmer  of  his  cultivating  at  leas£  one  product  that  is  readily 
convertible  into  money,  but  I  fail  to  see  that,  taking  one 
year  with  another,  a  well- devised  system  of  mixed  farming 
will  not  yield  quite  as  speedy  a  return  upon  capital  invested 
and  labor  expended  as  the  proportionately  more  extensive 
cultivation  of  one  or  two  products.  I  make  allowance  for 
such  influences  as  may  be  exerted  in  the  interest  of  the  es- 
tablished channels  of  trade,  but  when  the  farmers  of  thirty- 
five  states  cut  down  their  production  of  wheat  to  the  extent 
of  100,000,000  bushels  per  annum,  they  gave  no  thought 
either  to  empty  elevators  or  idle  freight  cars.  I  recognize 
the  fact  that  while  everything  must  have  a  beginning,  the 
sporadic  cultivation  of  a  product  for  which  there  is  no  local 
demand  is  rarely  profitable,  but  it  is  no  unwarrantable  excur- 
sion into  the  realm  of  speculation  to  sav  that  with  the  growth 
of  population  and  the  extension  of  manufactures  there  will 
spring  up  new  markets  for  every  product  that  can  be  grown 
on  United  States  soil.  I  realize,  moreover,  that  there  are 
many  important  products  in  the  cultivation  of  which  a  farmer 
would  hesitate  to  engage  without  some  practical  knowledge 
of  their  growth  and  preparation  for  market.  For  every 
farmer,  for  example,  who  has  had  experience  in  the  growing 
of  tobacco  there  are  twenty-five  who  understand  the  culti- 
vation of  the  cereals  and  the  management  of  cattle,  while 
there  are  many  products  with  regard  to  which  the  dispro- 
portion is  still  greater. 

The  American  farmer,  however,  is  as  migratory  as  he  is 
progressive.  There  is  scarcely  an  important  county  in  the 
west  that  has  not  drawn  upon  the  agricultural  population  of 
every  state  outside  the  cotton  belt,  and  it  certainly  took  the 


GEOGRAPHICAL    CONCENTRATION.  19 

people  of  Washington  but  a  very  short  time  to  place  their 
state  in  the  front  rank  of  the  hop-producing  states  of  the 
Union  after  it  was  discovered  that  the  volcanic  soil  of  the 
western  slopes  of  the  Cascades  was  well  adapted  to  the  culti- 
vation of  that  product. 

But  just  as  the  household  manufacture  of  linen  still  lingers 
in  western  Virginia,  where,  under  the  shadow  of  the  Cum- 
berland mountains,  many  families  still  weave  their  own  bed 
and  table  linen  from  the  product  of  their  own  fields,  so,  in  all 
probability,  will  there  continue  to  be  certain  localities  given 
up  largely  to  the  cultivation  of  particular  products,  not  only 
without  the  possession  of  any  especial  advantages  for  such 
cultivation,  but  even  to  the  positive  disadvantage  of  those 
engaged  in  the  industry,  and  certainly  altogether  out  of  ac- 
cord with  the  enlightenment  and  progress  of  the  age. 


M55398G 


GENERAL  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA— BERKELEY 

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13Nov'55Ws 


21-lOOm-l,  '54  (1887sl6)476 


